Insights and Interventions for AI Policy

There is increasing and rapid deployment of Artificial Intelligence across all areas of life. While AI systems can be used in ways that improve well-being, health, service efficiency and decision-making, they can also be used in ways that discriminate, exacerbate inequality, infringe upon rights, socially sort, disrupt democratic processes, limit access to services, introduce error, intensify surveillance, and exacerbate the effects of the climate crisis.

While the Canadian government has demonstrated its commitment to AI, we lack a cohesive framework for regulating public and private uses of AI in Canada. The first piece of federal legislation to focus on the regulation of AI use in Canada, The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), was under review by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology but ultimately died on the Order Paper due to the 2025 federal election. This project aims to support Canadian AI policymaking and governance in a few key ways:

First, through the AI Insights for Policymakers Program, convened by CIFAR and Mila, which Starling Co-Director Dr. Alissa Centivany co-chairs and serves as a core expert of: “The AI information space is noisy, often highly technical, and full of competing claims and vested interests. Finding reliable, independent and, above all, relevant insights is challenging. This rings especially true for policymakers who are grappling with how best to approach, regulate or leverage AI for the public interest despite having limited access to technical AI expertise and no clear mechanism to engage with scientific experts.

The AI Insights for Policymakers program addresses this gap by providing a platform for policymakers and scientists to have timely and meaningful interactions on key issues. Ultimately, we seek to bolster evidence-based policies across Canada by enabling policymakers to tap into the breadth and depth of the Canadian AI ecosystem’s knowledge.

Through a combination of open and accessible office hours with the expert group, as well as more in-depth policy feasibility testing exercises, the AI Insights for Policymakers program will connect policymakers with relevant experts to inform their thinking around AI and policy.

AI has the potential to improve lives, but without thoughtful governance it risks deepening inequality, undermining rights, and intensifying surveillance. Canada urgently needs a cohesive framework to ensure AI serves the public interest.

Second, through critical coalition-building work of the upcoming Canadian AI Governance Workshop, co-organized by Centivany and Dr. Joanna Redden, to be held in Ottawa on November 18, 2025. To work toward this goal the Starling Centre will convene a one-day workshop on Canadian AI Governance to take place on Nov. 18, 2025, at the Westin Hotel, Ottawa. Sixty invited participants will attend expert-led sessions on topics including: AIDA post-mortem and afterlife; Indigenous Consultation and Data Sovereignty; AI-Labour Reconfigurations; Environmental Impacts of AI Infrastructure Development and Use; and Human and Civil Rights Implications of AI. Participants will also engage in interactive breakout sessions on sector-specific concerns and forward-looking policy generation. This workshop immediately precedes the Canadian Science Policy Centre’s (CSPC) annual conference, Nov. 19-21, 2025, which brings together members of academia, government, and private and non-profit sectors from across Canada and abroad to find ways to engage science and policy to solve today’s most pressing contemporary challenges.

Third, Centivany continues to explore tensions between emerging technology, evolving social practices, and copyright law through her work on the copyright implications of AI and digital infrastructure development. In addition to recent research publications, Centivany regularly consults with decisionmakers and policymakers, and publishes policy briefs and white papers on these themes.

“Generative AI Use and Implications for the Copyright Board of Canada”, Copyright Board of Canada, an independent Administrative Tribunal of the Government of Canada, March 2025.

“Challenges and Opportunities for a Made-In-Canada Approach to AI,” report by Elbow Lake Collective: Aiden Bradley, Kelly Bronson, Alissa Centivany, Olivia Doggett, Kayla Hilstob, Jordan Kinder, Zenia Kish, Naomi Okabe, Anne Pasek, Sarah-Louise Ruder, Eliot Tretter, Kailey Walker, and Jiaqi Wen. Centre for Law, Technology, and Society, Ottawa, Canada, September 2025.

Centivany, A. (2024), “Mining, Scraping, Training, Generating: Copyright Implications of Generative AI,”.

Poyntz, S., Centivany, A., Hogan, M., Akanbi, O., Darroch, M., & Chee, F. (2025)“The author is dying: AI and the possible futures for academic publishing”, panel at the Canadian Communications Association, Toronto, Ontario, June 2025.

“What We Heard – Roundtable on AI and the cultural sector”, report by Mila – Quebec AI Institute as part of the National Cultural Data Strategy for Artificial Intelligence with the Canadian Heritage Ministry, Government of Canada, November 2024. https://mila.quebec/sites/default/files/media-library/pdf/115451/2024heritagerapportfinaleng-1-1.pdf